Haskell: No tolls for residents who live near gantry

Should you pay a highway toll if the gantry is near your house?

Sen. Will Haskell, DWestport, floated an idea during an interview Thursday that he said would put the burden of tolls on the backs of trucking companies and nonresident drivers.

In Haskell’s mind, a driver wouldn’t have to pay a toll if the gantry is within, for example, 10 miles of where an E-ZPass is registered.

“If you’re using 95 as a local road to get to Stop & Shop you shouldn’t have to pay,” Haskell said.

He did not specify if the distance would be calculated as road miles or concentric circles around the gantries.

Highway tolls haven’t been a thing in Connecticut since 1989. But Gov. Ned Lamont campaigned on limited tolling and a state study released in November said as much as $1 billion may be left on the table as long as there are no tolls.

Lamont visited the state Department of Transportation headquarters on the Berlin Turnpike on Thursday, and gave a funny look, then a smirk when a Hearst columnist told him about Haskell's idea.

“He must live within nine miles of a gantry,” Lamont quipped.

It’s unclear whether any state has tried exempting people based on how far they live from a tolling gantry.

None of the top officials at DOT had heard of the idea. Lamont and DOT Commissioner Joe Giulietti are working on a proposal for tolls and have not announced anything yet.

But Haskell, newly elected and a member of the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, said he had only be in favor of tolls if residents paid less than out-of state drivers.

A Westport native, many of his constituents are train commuters, and Haskell equated highway tolls with train fares, calling them both “user fees.”

“Those who take the train pay a user fee,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Why shouldn’t the same be asked of those on the roads? Why should CT taxpayers subsidize outof-state drivers and trucks?”

For Haskell, a system in which you pay more the further you go on a highway — such as exists in New Jersey and Massachusetts, among other states — or exempting drivers from the gantries nearest their homes means residents wouldn’t be paying for the wear on roadways caused by out-of-state drivers.

“They’re not really being asked to contribute,” he said Thursday.

Haskell said the issue of transportation is not partisan, but regional. Fairfield County legislators on the transportation committee are unified in their focus, he said of the committee’s first meeting Wednesday.

“What we’re starting to build is a Fairfield County coalition,” he said.

Haskell